The argument is that Facebook now plays a huge role in the
distribution of information. Its 2 billion active users may read
traditional news sources, like The New York Times and Business
Insider. But they aren't typically visiting those websites
directly. Instead, they're scrolling through Facebook's news feed
and reading articles that get shared by friends.

The problem is that Facebook users aren't always good at
distinguishing legitimate news sources from satire, propaganda,
or just plain false information. And if bad information goes
viral, it can negatively influence the public's opinion.

The spreading of false information during the election cycle was
so bad, that President Obama called Facebook a
"dust cloud of nonsense."

"People, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright
lies over and over again, as long as it's on Facebook and people
can see it, as long as its on social media, people start
believing it," he said.

But Mark Zuckerberg doesn't seem to get that.

"Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook -
it's a very small amount of the content - influenced the election
in any way is a pretty crazy idea,"
Zuckerberg said on Thursday night.

That seems a bit tone deaf.

If Facebook wants to be a platform where billion of people
regularly find and share news, then it needs to accept some of
the responsibility that comes with that power. That means coming
up with some guidelines to help spread information responsibly.

A messy business

It's not hard to see why Facebook is reluctant to do this. The
internet was built on the legal foundation that online companies
are not liable for third-party content displayed on their sites.

Acting as an information gatekeeper and making editorial
decisions is a difficult and messy business. Facebook learned
this earlier this year when contractors it employed
allegedly
suppressed politically conservative articles from the
trending news section.

But there's good news: Facebook doesn't need to reinvent the
wheel. Google has already spent two decades battling the
distribution of bad content online. Facebook can adopt this by:

Assessing the quality of the content being shared (and the
authority of the people who are sharing it)
Bury content that doesn't meet quality standards

Google has
built an algorithm that prioritizes the quality and relevance of
an article over everything else. Anyone can write anything
online. But not any piece of content will show up in the first
few pages of a Google search result.

It's not
perfect - just ask former US Senator Rick Santorum, who was the
victim of the most famous Google bomb, in which a webpage
characterizing the legislator in vulgar terms rose to the top of
search results. But Google takes its responsibility surfacing the
right information seriously (in part because its business depends
on it) and by and large people trust that the top results on
Google will be legitimate.

The
vetting game

Google also
examines the source of the article carefully. It has an
application process for publishers that want to be part of its
Google News or AMP (accelerated mobile pages) programs. Then it
has a team of Googlers carefully review each applicant and reject
the sites if they don't meet quality standards. Sites are
evaluated on a number of things, including their "authority" on a
subject matter, their "journalistic standards," their ability to
show "accountability" for content through proper attribution and
author bio pages, and more. If a site is rejected, it can reapply
a few months later.

Facebook's Instant Articles, by contrast, don't seem to require
much vetting at all. Instant Articles launched in closed beta,
with a few Facebook-approved partners. But now it appears open to
almost any site that has the required tech specifications. The
only requirement listed on the Instant Article's FAQ page for
publishers is that the content does not run afoul of Facebook's
community standards, which bar things like sexually explicit
content and violent threats.

Now that
Facebook is such an important part of the news cycle, its vetting
process needs to mature. It should evaluate the person who
is sharing a piece of content on Facebook, weigh the quality
of the link being shared, and then determine how far a
friend's status message should really spread.

Coming up with this sort of process isn't censorship. It's just
being responsible.